Chelsea & The City: How you’ve helped my freelance business

I purchased the Graphic Artist’s Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines (thanks to John Telford’s great advice!) and absolutely love it! It had so many answers to the questions I had and made me a lot more certain about what I was doing. It really helped me have the faith to jump right in.

I finally set a price for myself, created a contract, invoices, etc. It finally feels like it’s starting to come together — although I am still working on my website — that might take a while.

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In the past two months I have worked with several different companies and individual clients, including Qupia (a Brooklyn-based food company) creating their business cards and media kit, YogiBirds (a San Francisco-based yoga studio for kids) creating their website and promotional materials, Syringa Heights Water District creating their logo, 116 Studios (an Idaho-based design studio) creating a set of letterpress cards and most recently I have started to work with Pink Papaya (a national home spa and beauty products company) creating promotional materials. I have also worked with several individuals creating personalized infographics, cards, resumés, etc.

I found that once I put myself out there — through social media, networking and friends — a lot of different opportunities started to pop up. Social media is such an amazing tool to be able to use in this kind of business. I actually got quite a bit of feedback from just pinning some of my work on Pintrest. I was shocked at all of the interest I started having and decided that for a while I’m just going to take the work that comes my way. Someday maybe I will be able to pick and choose the projects I want to work on, but right now I am happy doing anything and everything!

I love doing this kind of work and am so happy I have the opportunity to dive into the freelance world. I am really determinedto stick with it and see where the future takes me.

— Chelsea

(Chelsea Kardokus is a freelance designer for TIME magazine in New York City. See more of her work here.)